T&T signs Unesco declaration to promote equity

Minister of the People and Social Development Dr Glenn Ramadharsingh and representatives of several Caricom member states, including Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, Montserrat and St Lucia, yesterday signed a comprehensive declaration to promote equity and social inclusion for some of the Caribbean’s most vulnerable communities.

It came at the closing of the second Unesco Management of Social Transformations Programme (MOST) regional forum of Ministers of Social and Sustainable Development. The conference was held under the auspices of the Ministry of the People and Social Development and its theme was “Promoting Equity and Social Inclusion: Pathways to Prosperity for All.”

The closing of the three-day conference was chaired by Ramadharsingh, who is also the president of the forum, and Dr Pilar Alvarez-Laso, the acting director-general of Unesco for Social and Human Sciences. The declaration addressed issues, such as research, a Caribbean vision for collaboration, policy objectives to be redefined from a human rights-based approach, child and gender sensitive policy and the development of a web site, which Ramadharsingh said for which T&T would be responsible.

In the closing remarks of the conference Trinidad and Tobago was praised by Jamaica and Montserrat for its Ministry of the People, which both countries saw as progressive. Jamaica said it would push for one. The venue for the third forum, which is to be held in St Kitts-Nevis or Venezuela, will be discussed in the next two months. The first forum was held in Kingston, Jamaica, in 2010.